How to maintain a beautiful lawn in Johnston County

By Leigh Hudson

I was five years old in 1958 when my parents bought a hardware and grocery store in Garner, and I am going to guess I was about 15 when I started to enjoy helping people grow a more beautiful lawn.

It was about that time that Kentucky 31 Tall Fescue replaced “wire grass” (common Bermuda) as the popular choice of turf grass because it germinated and grew tall in just a few short weeks. K31 Fescue was a prettier green color that also grew under shade trees — unlike Bermuda grass.

While the home builders continued to prefer the fescues, homeowners have learned that these “cool season” turf-type cultivars require considerable maintenance and expense to survive our summer heat and poor soil types.

Back in the 1980s, I remember reading in the Ortho Book of Lawns that cool season grasses were best suited in the southeastern U.S. “north of a line from north Alabama to Raleigh.”

In other words, if you want to grow fescues south of this line, you better plant it in September, have clay soil that is properly mulched, limed, fertilized, tilled six inches deep with seed raked-in a half of an inch deep, followed by a lawn roller and thick layer of wheat straw. And, without an underground sprinkler system, most of your lawn in the full sun will be dead and taken over by Bermuda grass by the end of the summer.

Upon opening our second store in Clayton in 1985, I was often informed of the “sandy, rocky, clay” soil that the new wave of one acre lot homeowners were confronting. The fescue that the builders threw out to sell the homes quickly turned into what I refer to as a “country yard” full of wire grass, crabgrass and broadleaf weeds.

Again, without the timely application of water, fertilizers and weed killers, an investment in fescue grasses is a total waste. Fescues must be maintained tall, thick and weed-free to survive the summer heat and wind.

So, for most of our Johnston County customers who have lawns mostly open to the sun, we recommend warm season grasses like Bermuda or Centipede. While Centipede is more expensive to buy and slower to develop, Bermuda thrives in our soil type and is most recognizable as the wire grass that takes over our vegetable gardens. It spreads over the soil, holding in moisture and preventing crabgrass and most broadleaf weeds.

Seeds should be planted for germination late in the spring with growth continuing until the lawn goes dormant in late fall. Most of our local golf courses and ball fields are some hybrid of Bermuda because it is durable and sustainable.

For the best value, please visit a seasoned lawn-and-garden dealer soon to learn the many details of growing and maintaining a beautiful lawn.

Leigh Hudson is the owner of Hudson’s Hardware & Outdoor Equipment in Clayton and Garner. Learn more at www.hudsonshardware.com.